Peter Hvizdak/NH Register Pool Photo
Jennifer Gondola began Wednesday in state court, proceeded to a meeting with the FBI, then went home with her iPhone4 — containing a video that has become the talk of the town and key evidence in two investigations.
Those were the latest developments in the multi-stage drama growing out of Gondola’s controversial arrest in downtown New Haven’s Temple Street courtyard in the wee hours of June 2.
Gondola (pictured at top), who’s 35 and from Ansonia, appeared in state Superior Court on Elm Street Wednesday on a misdemeanor charge of “interfering” with police at around 1:55 a.m. that day as nightclubs were letting out and police responded to the usual mayhem. She was recording an arrest and alleged roughing up of a 24-year-old man when the police sergeant in charge of the downtown bar detail, Chris Rubino, ordered her to turn over her iPhone4 camera. She refused and placed the iPhone in her bra. Then Rubino ordered another cop to grab the camera out of her bra and ordered Gondola under arrest.
That encounter is now the subject of an internal affairs complaint at the New Haven police department, which two years ago instituted a strict policy against officers stopping citizens from video-recording them or arresting them for “interfering.” (Click on the play arrow above to watch the video, which the Independent obtained Tuesday.) It also sparked an FBI civil-rights investigation into the arrest that Gondola witnessed and partly video-recorded. She and her attorney, Diane Polan, spoke for about an hour with one federal agent, Dave Cannell, and New Haven Internal Affairs Detectives Craig Dixon and Tammi Means in the offices of the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Church Street.
Before that, Gondola had to deal with her misdemeanor charge at the courthouse a block up the street. There, state Judge Bruce Thompson agreed to continue her case until July 13 at the request of Assistant State’s Attorney David Strollo.
“The state is going to need some time to look at further evidence and research into the” law on confiscating cameras, Strollo told the judge. He refused to discuss the matter afterward.
Paul Bass Photo
Polan and Gondola outside court Wednesday.
Gondola’s attorney, Polan, did speak to reporters.
She said she intends to press for a dismissal of the charges or else take the case to trial. She said Rubino had no right to take Gondola’s phone.
“This is a clear violation of the department’s policy” on recording cops, Polan said. (Read a story about the policy here.)
She questioned Rubino’s argument that he needed the video as crucial evidence to support a misdemeanor charge against the man he was arresting at the time. Polan noted that other people in the plaza had been recording the arrest. The others stopped recording when police asked them to; only Gondola kept recording, after the arrestee was already in handcuffs and as members of the crowd accused cops of using excessive force (including stomping on his head).
In any case, Rubino’s rationale, if embraced by the state, would put all news reporters in jeopardy. “This would allow the police to grab the video cameras and the still cameras of the press,” she said. If “any member of the media is filming anything that might involve a crime,” cops could “shortcut the legal process and the legal protections everyone has in the name of protecting evidence.”
Currently police must seek a warrant or a subpoena to, say, obtain footage from a news organization. “Say you’re NBC. They can’t just take your camera and grab it off your body” if a crime occurs, she said.
Rubino had plenty of other evidence available for his June 2 arrest without needing to invoke emergency powers to seize a camera (from a bra), Polan argued. “There were three or four other officers writing reports. There was a picture showing [the arrestee] on the ground. I don’t think that [Rubino’s claim] is sufficient justification to reach into someone’s bra and take their cell phone” rather than, say, seek a warrant.
Rubino recently told the Independent he was worried that if he didn’t get the phone, Gondola would erase it because it would exonerate him of excessive force accusations.
“I would never have let her leave with that phone,” Rubino told the Independent. “Do you think anybody ever turns anything in in favor of the police? She would have never brought that in. I took that because it was in my favor.”
The Report Vs. The Video
In court Wednesday Polan obtained Rubino’s written police report. She argued that the newly released video that Gondola shot — which begins at the tail end of the cops’ handling of the arrestee, Horace Rawlings — reveals that Rubino misrepresents one aspect of their encounter: at what point Rubino invoked her right to record the police.
Here’s what Rubino wrote:
“After completing this arrest, I saw that numerous people had been taking pictures with cameras and cell phones. I saw one female, standing right next to us, that was video taping the arrest. I approached her, later identified as Gondola, and asked her if she was recording the arrest. She said ‘yes.’ I asked her if I could review the recording. She again said ‘yes’ and played back the recording for me.
“As I watched the recording I saw that she had recorded a majority of the arrest and that it clearly showed the action of Rawling[s, the arrestee] during the arrest. I felt that the recording clearly showed his attitude and interfering.
“I informed Gondola that the recording was evidence of the arrest and that I would need to confiscate it. She said she would not give me the phone. I again told her that I would need to place the phone into evidence. She said that Federal Law says that she can record it and that she would not give it to me. I told her that she had every right to record it, but that because it clearly showed evidence of the crime, that I needed it as evidence …”
Polan noted that the video shows that Gondola asserted “I have a civil right” to record well before he demanded that she turn it over.
“Then he came up with some excuse to take the phone,” Polan continued.
The FBI and local police IA staff returned Gondola’s phone to her Wednesday after reviewing and keeping a copy of the video. Gondola and Polan visited them for an interview following the appearance in Superior Court.
Tamara Harris Photo
The FBI opened a civil-rights investigation last week after the publication in the Independent of a photo (at left) taken by another bystander, showing Sgt. Rubino with his foot on Rawling’s head.
Gondola has told the Independent in previous interviews that she started video-recording after she saw a group of cops “hitting and kicking” Rawlings. (Two other witnesses, Gondola’s friend Tamara Harris and Devon Youmans, who was working a hip-hop party inside Pulse nightclub that night, said they saw that, too. Rubino told a different story.)
That does not show up on the video. The video starts after that point.
Her video footage, obtained by the Independent Tuesday evening, is dark and chaotic.
The footage shows Rawlings on the ground with Sgt. Rubino and another officer on top of him, forcing him into handcuffs while he resists their attempts. Rawlings taunts the officers, calling them “bitch” and “pussy-ass niggers.”
Once in handcuffs, Rawlings lies on his side looking up at the cops standing over him and continues to call them names. The other officer picks him up and flips him face down on the concrete. Rawlings struggles as the cop puts his knee in his back.
Gondola can be heard exclaiming, “Yo, you don’t got to slam him. That’s fucked up, yo. He didn’t touch you. That’s fucked up.”
“Worse, Yo”
Fifty seconds into the video, Sgt. Rubino steps forward and pushes Rawlings’ head quickly and forcefully into the concrete with the bottom of his foot. He continues pressing Rawlings’ head into the sidewalk with his foot as he leans down and puts his finger in Rawlings’ face and says repeatedly, “Stop resisting.”
“Get your fucking foot off me!” Rawlings says.
“No. Stop resisting,” Rubino says. The other cop continues grappling with Rawlings’ squirming legs.
“Pussy-ass!” Rawlings says.
After 10 seconds, Rubino removes his foot.
“Why does he have his foot on his head? That’s crazy,” Gondola exclaims. She advises Rawlings to “keep quiet.”
“Just be quiet. They’re going to fuck you up later, yo. Worse, yo,” she tells him.
A few seconds later, Rawlings groans as a cop kneels on him. “Yo, get that on camera, baby,” he says.
“I got you,” Gondola replies. “But you need to shut up, yo. … They’re going to fuck you up when they get you to that fucking station, yo.”
“You filming that ma’am?” asks a man, off-camera.
“Yes, I am,” Gondola says. “It’s my civil right.”
“I’d like to review it,” the voice says.
Then the screen goes blank.
Click here to watch a video, previously obtained and published by the Independent, taken by Devon Youmans. It ends when Youmans obeyed an order given to members of the crowd to disperse and stop recording. Gondola kept recording.
Melissa Bailey contributed to this story.
Previous stories on this case:
• Video-Recorded Arrestee Disputes Police Account
• FBI Gets OK To Inspect Cop-Filmer’s Phone
• Rubino: “I’ll Be Vindicated”
• FBI Joins Beating Probe
• Sgt. Arrests Video-Taker; IA Probe Begins
looks as though he made quick work confiscating her phone... unless we are still owed 20 more seconds of footage.